September 07, 2010

If you have seen many of my Topaz Tuesday posts, you know I really like a variety of things. I have done food, people, koi fish, in addition to buildings, cars, etc. I like to explore what kinds of images will work with Topaz.

But OTOH, sometimes you come across a scene that is so obviously Topaz friendly, you just crack a smile as you are shooting. I came across this old truck on a hot summer afternoon. You can tell from the shadows that it was not dead noon, but anyway this is a HOT landscape to work with. I had my 24-70 zoom lens on the camera body, and set it to its widest aperture, and moved in close, to get this "in your face" point of view.

Before jumping into Topaz, I first made a few Lightroom enhancements. There were some sensor goobers, and I cloned those out. Then I added some GND (Graduated Neutral Density) to make the sky nicer. Then into Topaz Adjust to bring out all the detail in the aging relic. I loved the effect on the truck. But I didn't so much care for what had happened with the foliage. Fine and out of focus areas are not Topaz Adjust finest moments.

So back in Lightroom I painted these areas and applied maximum de-clarity. It worked perfect. I could also do a blur in Photoshop, but I prefer to work in LR as much as possible.

What a beaut old truck, eh? It's been at this winery for many decades, and I'm sure it has supplied a great service to the people and the wine. Let me know how you like this treatment, on the continue link below, where you can also see the original image before any adjustments.

July 15, 2010

This was the setting for a recent family event in Long Beach. Lovely, isn't it? So nice that they chose to light up the bridge in such a beautiful way. Long Beach really does make the water frontage area of the downtown nice and appealing.

What do you think of this one? It's easy to comment with the link below!

May 23, 2009

As I have mentioned before on the blog, I am a huge space fan. Especially Apollo era space stories.

While on my recent boat trip up the Atlantic coast I had a chance to both see an important Apollo artifact, and also have some interesting time near Kennedy Space Center to reflect. With the Atlantis space shuttle coming home today or tomorrow, I think now is the time for this post. Click on the continue link to read more and see the pictures.

May 15, 2009

While on our boating layover, in Southport NC, we took numerous walks on shore. The sun was setting, and we headed back to the marina. The sunset was very orange, but being there for the first time I had no idea this was unusual.

I thought the evening shooting was over, and I was on the dock, just 50 yards from the boat, when I turned to my right and saw this scene. The setting sun, illuminating this shallow water, with the wind causing these gentle small waves. Oh baby!

This was a made in the sunset shot for my 400mm fixed lens that just happened to be on the camera. I had time to be certain of my settings, choosing the minimum aperture, for a reasonably high shutter speed. Looking at those specs now, I should have bumped the iso to 200, thus getting a faster shutter. But luckily I am a good handholder, and a 1 series body with a 400mm lens is quite a bit of weight, thus it doesn't move around that much.

So my shot was crystal clear, as you can see by the crisp reeds. This is the kind of shot that 2 years ago I wouldn't have even noticed. So I'm pleased that I did, and it is a recognition that my visual skills for photography are improving, but of course I still have a long way to go before I am there with my photography heroes!

The TV was on when I returned to the boat (gotta love that gimbal mounted satellite dish for yachts!) and we found that the big Myrtle Beach SC fires were underway. That was what made for the bright orange sunset that night.

May 14, 2009

While off the coast of South Carolina, I happen to be running the boat when I began seeing this storm moving from the land to the ocean. This is the biggest single, "concentrated," storm I have ever seen from the water. Probably from the land as well.

While the storm looks plenty foreboding in this picture above, it doesn't actually do it justice. The storm is about 5 miles away, I have my 16-35 on 16mm, and I still cannot even get the whole thing in one picture! This storm is about 20 miles wide. It's probably 30,000 feet tall.

Normally, when most of us think of stormy weather, you don't think of a single, organized, cloud like this. At least those of us on the west coast don't! About the time we started seeing it, the Coast Guard started talking about it on the radio. Basically they said "get the heck away from this monster!"

I was a bit torn. I mean, it's a free boat wash, right? But if you look right up the center, that is one nasty bit of rain. We decided to slow down a bit, move a little to the left, and let Mr. Storm have his way with the ocean. It was moving at about 30 mph. Anyone that got overtaken was in for quite a wild ride.

This all took place at about 5-6 pm. When I began my night watch shift at midnight, the seas were relatively calm, but I had lightning at least once per minute for about an hour.

May 12, 2009

One of the best inventions going, besides great digital SLR's and modern lenses, are GPS based navigation systems. Why? Because you can look at the screen, and see that a given road is a nice detour, that will eventually take you to the place you are going to. Without it, unless you are really studying the map, how do you know where that side road goes?

While on our Pt Reyes trip, my son and I headed to the south end of the park and visit the town of Bolinas. I had never been there. We were there to see if we could get any shots of the beautiful coastline. But of course it was fogged in.

So on our way back, I noticed on the Nav system that a small road, upcoming to my left, would also join Highway 1, a few miles to the north. Bingo. Along this road we discovered a very photo worthy windmill, which I'll probably show you at a later time.

Just before the road rejoined Highway 1, we were presented with the scene above. Prior to becoming serious about photography, I would drive through such a scene and of course enjoy it. Now I want to photograph it, and do it well.

Which wasn't too hard withthe scene presented. The curvy road, the light peeking from the corner, the weathered fence along with moss laden tree branches. And precious little traffic to boot. A lucky detour indeed!

If you look at the exposure details though, you can see it was obviously pretty dark. At f5.6, iso 400, I only got a shutter speed of 1/20th? I probably should have cranked down to f4.0, which would have provided a shutter of 1/40th? But since I didn't, now did I get such a clear shot? A tripod makes sense, but I don't often set up a tripod in the middle of a road!

The answer is Image Stabilization. This lens is one of Canon's newest designs, and has a built in stabilization mechanism, which is similar to have 3 or 4 stops of additional exposure. So it's equivalent at least to a shutter of say 1/125th, which is easily handheld by me. Hey, another great modern invention!

May 04, 2009

This is an image I am particularly proud to share. On the second to last day of my recent trip to the east coast, I visited the Virginia Air and Space Museum in Hampton, VA (website: http://www.vasc.org/). I'm very happy with many pictures I took, but this one is my favorite.

I was getting ready to leave, and I'm sure I had just been taking some pictures in a darker area, when I saw the suited space man, suspended from the ceiling. I took one shot. In Adobe Lightroom, I applied a preset which altered the mostly white colors to the presentation you see here.

I'm a huge NASA buff, so most things having to do with space appeal to me. This picture looks to me what it would be like if we could have a "no gravity building," to train space walkers. In this case, the space walker has jetted himself up near the ceiling. The building is mostly dark, to simulate the space environment. How cool is this? The background helps make the image, in my opinion.

I'm almost embarassed to include the technical information, as I have above... If you are a serious photographer, you probably already see what I did wrong. If you want to learn a bit more about the technical side, click the continue link and I'll fess up about my screw up. Either way, tell me what you think of this particular image!

May 02, 2009

On our trip we anchored off Williamsburg, and toured Colonial Williamsburg for a couple of hours. It's definitely worth a visit even for the casual history buff. Some of the buildings have brick walls around them, that date back 200 years. We were standing at this one spot, discussing them, especially this rounded cap.

I was thinking about a shallow depth of field shot that would run the length of one of these walls, and was setting my f-stop appropriately. I had noticed the nice early morning shadows - I'm a sucker for dappled light. Just then, my friend Cliff said "feel these bricks, they don't make bricks like this today..." and he and his wife both reached out to touch them.

I had only a second (literally) to get this shot off. I also took the shot I had first imagined, but I much prefer this version. As I reviewed on the camera's lcd, I could imagine the brick mason of 200 years ago showing the lord of the manor his craft and them reaching out to touch the work in a very similar manner. A very nice morning. What do you think of this image?

April 29, 2009

We spent two nights and one full day in Southport, North Carolina. The winds were over 30 knots on the ocean, so it was time to come in. What we found was a classic, bucolic, southern town. And so of course I did my best to capture some images that capture the mood.

The above image was taken on our walk into the town. We took the tender over to the marina, then walked to main street.

April 28, 2009

Many boats have dogs, and the one I am on is no exception. These "goldens" sure have easy going and loving personalities. I know there are a lot of dog lovers out there, so here is my attempt at a few fun shots of this particular doggie. And a boat trip update!